Salon: "And instead of playing the peace-loving Christian, Gibson is swatting at critics, real and imagined. Of New York Times writer Frank Rich, Gibson admits to having said, 'I wanted to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.'"
And that's not all, kids:
Sawyer: You said, "The Holy Ghost was working through me."
Gibson: I've received a lot of ridicule for that statement. I think that the Holy Ghost is real. I believe that he's looking favorably on this film and he wanted to help.
Proclaiming himself "somewhere between Howard Stern and Saint Francis of Assisi on the scale of morality," Gibson also seems creepily preoccupied with evil, both apparently in the focus of his film and in his current situation.
Sawyer: You said at one point, "The big dark force didn't want us to make this film."
Gibson: Sure.
Sawyer: What was the force?
Gibson: What was the force? It's the thing you can't see. I'm a believer, by the way. So if you believe, you believe that there are big realms of good and evil, and they're slugging it out.
(via A.O.)
Posted by DrMabuse at February 19, 2004 11:45 AMMany people mock sincere religious conviction, or, as I do, sincerity in all its forms. But I'm surprised that you're so stunned by his sincerity: he is seriously religious and he doesn't hide it or step back from his beliefs.
If you are a Catholic, and you have actually paid attention in Sunday school and learned your catechism, you believe the same things he does:
When you take communion you are literally consuming the body and blood of Christ. Christ died for your sins. Only the fulfillment of the sacraments of the Catholic Church will grant you entry to heaven. So, no matter how much he loves her, his wife is going to hell because she's not a true Traditionalist Catholic (and he is, btw, in a splinter group not actually recognized by the Church and which does not in turn recognize the Church in Rome).
It's all well and good to say "inter-faith dialog" and "ecumenical goodwill" but let's be honest: if you are truly Catholic (or a serious believer in a lot of other religions) you believe that lots of people are going to burn in hell for their sins.
So, he's a religious man. He believes in God and the Devil. You're surprised by his simplistic view of the world? When did it become surprising to find an important, wealthy, or influential person who believes in God and the Devil? I mean, aside from during the Enlightenment.
Posted by: Verbal at February 19, 2004 01:03 PMWhat looks simplistic from the outside is more complex than you'll ever know on the inside. Many years ago I came to a personal belief on belief, and that's that reason - rather, the modern mind, in all its intellect - must be set aside to truly engage faith. It is something that adheres to no particular age. I believe the Christian faith to be intrensic.
That being, to explain the larger scope of good and evil, that is the Lord and Satan, to a non-believer and to a further degree, someone steeped very much in the thinking of this age, would be near impossible. But not completely.
Some of the most fundamental tenets of faith so radically go against what most people have been trained to not only work towards, but fight for as well. First and foremost, Christianity asks you to surrender your whole will to God. Concepts of hierarchy and blind trust are lost upon most people these days. The idea that there is good and evil - what is righteous and what is sin - is unfavorable to relativistic shades of gray thinking most embrace.
Posted by: Tom Working at February 19, 2004 07:19 PM